Safe If We Stand Close Together
by setepenre-set
Summary: Roxanne attends 'Lil Gifted School.
1. Chapter 1

"But he didn't do it on purpose!" Roxanne says.

The whole class turns to stare at her.

"He didn't do it on purpose," Roxanne repeats, quieter. "He was trying to put the fire out; didn't you see?"

"Rules are rules, Roxanne," says Miss Simmons. "Bad people who break rules have to be punished."

Roxanne squirms. She's a good girl. She's never had a teacher look at her like that before; it makes her stomach feel squirmy and uncomfortable. She doesn't like it.

"And breaking a rule on accident," Miss Simmons continues, "is just as bad as breaking a rule on purpose." She smiles, sweet, but with something nasty behind it, like bubble-gum flavored cough syrup.

"But that's wrong," Syx says suddenly, from the corner, and the whole class looks over at him now, collectively gasping. Roxanne looks too, her eyes huge. She's never heard anybody tell a teacher that they were wrong before.

"Excuse me?" Miss Simmons says, and there's nothing sweet about her voice now.

Syx still doesn't seem to realize what he's done, though; he's looking at Miss Simmons, a crease between his eyebrows.

"That's wrong," he says again. "Breaking a rule on accident's different than breaking it on purpose. That's why Uncle Lenny got eight years but Uncle Vic got life. 'Cause involuntary manslaughter's different than murder."

For a moment the entire class is silent.

"I think," says Miss Simmons, "that you can stand in the Bad Corner for the rest of the day for talking back."

Syx's mouth falls open in dismay; so does Roxanne's. It's only nine-thirty; is Miss Simmons going to make him stand in the Bad Corner until school gets out? What about lunch?

Miss Simmons smiles again, "And now, class, Wayne is going to lead us all in a sing-along! Won't that be nice?"

* * *

"That isn't even how you're supposed to play dodgeball!" Roxanne says loudly. "There's supposed to be teams!"

Stupid Wayne and all the other children just ignore her and keep throwing balls at Syx.

* * *

"He looks like a smurf," Lisa says, loud enough that Syx, three tables over, can hear.

And he does hear; Roxanne can tell. His ears blush light purple and his shoulders hunch in his orange jumpsuit and he stops whispering to his fish for a moment.

Annie and Miranda giggle.

"I think he looks like a bobblehead," Miranda says.

"A blue bobblehead," says Annie.

"A smurf bobblehead," says Lisa, and the three of them laugh again.

Roxanne doesn't know she's going to stand up until she's already standing up, the legs of her chair scraping loudly over the floor.

She wants to throw her chair across the room. Instead, she grabs her crayons and her coloring book (Lisa can keep her stupid special metallic crayons that her aunt brought back from Canada; Roxanne doesn't even want to share them anymore.)

Lisa and Annie and Miranda are all looking at her like she's crazy. Roxanne wants to say something smart and mean to them, but she can't think of anything because of how angry she is. So she just takes her crayons and her coloring book and walks over to Syx's table in silence, and, in silence, sits down across from him.

Syx looks at her, eyes round, clutching his fish to his chest like he's afraid Roxanne is going to try to steal it or something.

"We're going to be friends now," Roxanne tells Syx, in a tone that allows for no argument. She picks up her blue crayon and colors the sky on her picture aggressively.

"Are we?" Syx asks.

"Yes," Roxanne says, still coloring with a vengeance.

There is a moment of silence.

"Do—do you want to be friends with Minion, too?" Syx asks, holding out his fish tentatively towards her.

Lisa and Annie and Miranda are whispering about her now; she can hear their hissing voices.

"Yes, I do," Roxanne says firmly.

A smile starts in Syx's eyes and spreads over the rest of his face, unfurling like a flower in the sun.

* * *

"No, but see, it's simple," Syx says, waving his arms excitedly. Minion and Roxanne exchange a meaningful look. Syx's 'simple' is not simple. "I know you'll understand if you just try!"

"Okay," Roxanne says. "Explain again."

They're sitting in the corner of the playground, behind the supply shed. The other kids don't usually bother them here. Syx is trying to tell her about his latest invention, a new robot suit for Minion, a real one that Minion can move around by himself (Minion says he doesn't feel safe in the ball anymore, ever since Wayne decided it would be funny to use him to play soccer during recess one day). But Syx's description of the suit has devolved into an attempt to explain to Roxanne how, exactly, electricity works.

"All right!" Syx says, grinning. "When the circuit is open, the electrical charge," he holds up his left hand and wiggles his fingers in a way that is obviously meant to symbolize electricity, "gets stuck; it can't go anywhere."

He grabs Roxanne's left hand with his right hand.

"No zap," he says. "But! If the circuit is closed—" without letting go of Roxanne's left hand, he grabs Roxanne's right hand with his left hand, "—then the current goes around and around! It goes into one of your hands and through your body and out the other and that's it, that's the shock! Zap!" he finishes.

"Zzzt!" Roxanne says, and pretends to jump and jerk like she's being electrocuted.

Syx laughs. "Yes, precisely!" he adds, grinning at her expectantly.

"Huh," says Roxanne, frowning at their hands. "I think I do understand."

"Hah!" says Syx triumphantly.

"Ewww," says Lisa's voice from above them

Roxanne jumps; she can feel Syx do the same, his hands jerking in hers.

Their classmates are standing above them in a mob (Wayne floating at the front of them).

"What do you think you're doing?" Wayne asks Syx, like he's caught them playing with matches or something.

"We were just—we were talking about electricity," Syx says in a small voice.

"Why are you holding hands?" Lisa asks.

"That's gross," Miranda says.

"He's bad," says Annie.

"You could catch something, Roxy!" Lisa says.

Roxanne looks down at their hands, still linked. She feels Syx's grip go slack, like he's giving her the chance to let go. She tightens her own grip instead.

"What are you, four years old?" Roxanne asks scornfully. "It's not like he has cooties, you big babies!"

Lisa sniffs.

"I just thought I'd better warn you before he turns your skin blue!" she says.

Roxanne really wants to kick Lisa in the shins. It's probably a good thing she's not standing up, otherwise she might really do it.

"You are stupid," Roxanne tells her instead. "Go away and leave us alone!"

"Wayne says he could," Lisa insists. "Wayne says if you spend too much time with him he'll turn your skin blue and make all your hair fall out and your head will swell up and then you'll look just like him." There are murmurs of agreement from the crowd of children. Lisa's eyes sparkle maliciously. "But I guess you'd be happy then, wouldn't you, Smurfette?"

Roxanne recoils like Lisa's just slapped her.

"He's bad, Roxy," Wayne says, chest puffed out beneath his gold stars. "He's going to hurt you. You should stay away from him."

Syx lets go of her hands, drawing back from her, drawing back from the crowd, drawing in on himself. Roxanne wants to scream at the unfairness of everything, at Wayne's stupid smug face and Lisa's fake smile, at all the rest of them.

Inspiration strikes like an electrical charge through a closed circuit.

"Lisa," Roxanne says loudly, "Annie and Miranda both think your new haircut is ugly. They told me so three weeks ago, when you got it."

Lisa goes pale and her head snaps around to Annie and Miranda, just in time to catch the guilty expressions on their faces.

"And Wayne," Roxanne continues, voice shaking with rage. "You're horrible at singing. Everyone thinks so. They're too scared to tell you to your face but they're all laughing at you behind your back!"

The look of shocked hurt the flashes across Wayne's face is deeply satisfying, as is the suspicious way he looks at the other kids, and the way they all start backing up from him, like they're afraid he's going to attack them with his laser vision or something.

Roxanne scoops up Minion's ball in one hand and shoves herself to her feet, then grabs Syx's hand and pulls him up after her.

"We should run," Syx whispers.

They do.

* * *

"They might be right, you know," Syx says at lunch later that week. He tears his peanut butter and jelly sandwich in half, and then proceeds to rip it into smaller pieces. The jelly oozes out onto the tabletop.

"Who might be right about what?" Roxanne asks, taking a bit of her apple.

"The—" Syx scowls and gestures around them with a jelly-covered hand. "The others! They might be right about me. Not about—not about your skin turning blue and your hair falling out and your head swelling up, I mean, obviously that isn't going to happen; seriously, that is the most ir-ratio-nal thing I have ever heard, but—" he traces a pattern in the jelly on the table. "What if I am bad?" he finishes in a whisper. "What if it's destiny?"

"You aren't bad!" Roxanne says, swift and forceful. She sets her apple down.

Syx looks up at her, frowning.

"But I do bad things all the time," he says simply. "I set the wastepaper basket on fire five times already this week!"

"You're not bad," Roxanne insists. "You're just, you know, accident-prone!"

Syx bites his lip. Minion rolls comfortingly towards his hand, ignoring the jelly. Syx puts his hand absently on the ball.

"But," he says, "I'm always in trouble with Miss Simmons at school and with the Warden at home. If they think I'm bad, then I must be, right?"

Roxanne bites her own lip.

"I think," she whispers, conscious that she's about to say something she can't ever go back from, "I think maybe the adults are wrong."

"And people don't like me," Syx says, so quiet Roxanne can barely hear him. "Nobody likes me."

Roxanne gets up and goes around the table; Syx looks up at her with a confused expression, and then she hugs him.

Syx goes perfectly still, stiff and immobile in her arms, and then he puts his arms awkwardly around her back and squeezes very gently. Roxanne waits for him to stop squeezing, and then stands back up, her hands still on his shoulders. She probably has jelly in her hair now. She doesn't care.

"I like you," she says fiercely.

"I don't understand why," Syx says, looking up at her with a lost expression.

* * *

Gym is easily Roxanne's least favorite class. Miss Simmons always wants them to play dodgeball—Wayne's wrong version of dodgeball.

The game always starts the same way. Wayne is the 'team captain', and he picks the other kids to help him throw balls one at a time, in the order that he likes them on that particular day. Dodgeball order is a big deal at this school. Today, the order goes: Lisa, Sam S., Alex, Derick, Sam T., Miranda, Stephen, Tommy, Nick, and then Annie, who used to always get picked second but got moved to third-to-last when she broke her leg rollerskating—Wayne laughed at her cast when she wore it to school for the first time.

Only Roxanne and Syx are left, standing against the wall like they're facing the firing squad, waiting for Wayne to point to Roxanne so everybody can throw things at Syx.

But today, after Wayne squints at them thoughtfully, screwing up his face in concentration, he points—not at Roxanne—

But at Syx.

Syx, in the act of buckling some sort of new protective helmet onto his head, stops and stares at Wayne in shock.

"Wh—what?" he demands. "You want—what?"

"That's right," Wayne says, smirking. "Come be on our side, Syx."

Syx stares at him for a moment longer, glances at Roxanne, then looks back at Wayne.

Slowly, Syx unbuckles the helmet from his head and hands it to Roxanne.

She isn't going to cry. She isn't. Even if the bottom has dropped out of the world, even if Syx is leaving her here, Roxanne is not going to cry.

She puts the helmet on; it seems like the only thing to do at that point.

"It's okay," she tells Syx quietly, because she knows, she knows how much he's wanted this.

She waits for Syx to walk away.

But he doesn't.

"You!" Syx bursts out suddenly, finger pointed accusingly at Wayne. "You are—you are mean! Roxanne is my friend and you wanted to make me—that is mean and you are mean and all this time I've thought I was the bad one, that it was destiny, that it was the way it had to be, but you know what? You're the one who's bad! You! Not me! And I don't want to be on your side! I don't want to be on any side without Roxanne!" Breathing hard, he turns to Roxanne. "I don't have the helmet calibrated for two people, but we should be safe if we stand close together," he says in a rush, and then puts his arms around her.

Roxanne closes her eyes and hugs him back tightly.

She doesn't understand what he means about the helmet until after it deflects one of the balls into a window; she just wants to hug him.

* * *

Of course, Syx gets in trouble for the helmet; Miss Simmons is even more upset about nearly getting hit herself than she is about the window.

"He wasn't trying to hurt anyone!" Roxanne says, after Wayne shoves Syx in the Bad Corner yet again. "He just didn't want to get hit anymore!"

"That is enough, young lady!" Miss Simmons snaps, and Roxanne flinches at her tone, sinking down in her chair. "We've talked about the rules before, Roxanne! Now I don't want to hear another word about this from you. Unless," she adds, "you'd like to join your friend there for quiet time in the Bad Corner!"

With a hot twist of shame, Roxanne finds herself blinking back tears.

Miss Simmons smiles her needles in candy-floss smile and turns back to the board.

Roxanne takes a breath.

She stands up, chair legs scraping across the floor.

Miss Simmons turns back to her.

"You are wrong," Roxanne says quietly.

And she goes to stand beside Syx in the Bad Corner.

Behind her, there is a long moment of silence.

"Well," says Miss Simmons with a vicious titter, "now that our two troublemakers have been taken care of, let's move on to music class. Wayne, why don't you sing something for us all?"

Roxanne stares into the supply cabinet, breath coming quickly. She is in the Bad Corner. She is in the Bad Corner. She told a teacher that she was wrong. What will her parents think? What will everyone think?

Syx shifts slightly, so that the backs of their hands brush together.

"Thanks," he whispers, under the sound of Wayne's off-key yodeling.

Roxanne doesn't answer, but she takes his hand and laces their fingers together.

They stand like that for a long time.


	2. Chapter 2

The bus ride home is sort of terrible.

Syx doesn't take the regular bus; he gets picked up by the prison bus, so Roxanne has to sit alone. That isn't so very bad; she got used to it when she first befriended Syx. She knows now to sit at the front of the bus, where it's safest—the back is where Wayne and the 'cool' kids congregate. They've never done anything to her, exactly, but they say things that she really doesn't want to listen to all the way home.

What's really awful is the note that Miss Simmons sent home for Roxanne to give to her parents. A disciplinary note.

Roxanne hasn't ever gotten a disciplinary note before. She's got it stuffed in her backpack, wedged in the very middle of all her books and folders, but she can still sense it in spite of all the insulation, like it's burning a hole through all of the layers of paper and cloth. The knowledge of the note twists at her insides, making her want to throw her whole backpack out the window, or curl up into a little protective ball, or both. Except she can't just throw her backpack out the window because she has to get the note signed by her mother and bring it back to Miss Simmons tomorrow.

The note is in a sealed envelope, too, so she can't even read it before she gives it to her mom.

Roxanne hates this stupid note.

* * *

Roxanne lies sideways on her bed, ear pressed against the wall so that she can hear her mother in the kitchen, on the phone with her father. They're talking about her, about the note.

It sounds like a tense conversation, but that doesn't really tell her anything; all of her parents' conversations are tense these days.

"—very understanding in her note," Roxanne's mother says, and then pauses. "No. No, Steve, I haven't talked to our daughter yet because I thought I'd better talk to you first." She pauses again. "Because I knew that you'd find some way to criticize whatever I said! I am trying to be fair here and give you a chance to—oh, don't you dare try to imply that I can't handle my daughter!" A pause. "Is it so unreasonable to expect you to want to take a part in raising your child?" She is silent for a moment. "Good. Glad we've cleared that up, then. No, please don't feel obligated to talk to your child. I wouldn't dream of inconveniencing you." A pause, and then she huffs out a sigh. "Fine. I said fine. That's fine. Yes. I think so, too, yes. Good. I'm glad we agree on that, at least. Hold on."

Roxanne hears her mother's footsteps down the hall. She flops back against her pillows, trying to look natural and like she hasn't been eavesdropping.

A knock on her bedroom door, and then the door opens and her mother steps inside.

"Roxanne, honey," she says, and Roxanne sits up. "Your father is on the phone."

Roxanne holds her hand out wordlessly for the phone and her mother hands it to her. She puts the headset to her ear.

"Hello," she says.

"Hey, kiddo," her dad's voice comes through the phone.

"Hi," she says.

Her mother lingers in the doorway for a moment, the skin around her mouth and eyes tight as she looks at Roxanne, and then she steps outside and closes the door behind herself.

"Your mom says your teacher sent a note home saying you were disrespectful to her today," her father says, voice tinny through the speaker of the phone. "Is that true?"

"I told her she was wrong," Roxanne says, picking at a loose thread on her bedspread. "She was wrong."

Her father sighs.

"Oh, kiddo," he says. "Roxy, listen—you're a very truthful person—and that's good! But sometimes, you've got to think about how you go about telling people the truth. Remember that Wayne kid you told me about, how mad he was when you told everybody that his rules for dodgeball were wrong?"

"They are wrong," Roxanne says.

"Maybe so," her dad agrees. "But you're not going to make any friends announcing it like that, in front of everybody! And when you do that sort of thing to adults, to people who are in charge, it makes them feel like you're saying that they're stupid, that they shouldn't be in charge. Hurts their feelings, you know? Is that what happened with Miss Simmons today?"

Roxanne twists the loose thread around one fingertip.

"I guess," she says.

"Kiddo," her dad says, "you gotta get some tact!"

Roxanne yanks at the thread.

Her dad is acting like her talking back to Miss Simmons was an accident. Which is sort of a relief. Her parents are less likely to be mad if it was been an accident, right? They aren't unreasonable about accidents like Miss Simmons is.

But it's also sort of frustrating. Miss Simmons had been wrong. And she isn't—she isn't a very good teacher.

She's actually a really bad teacher.

The force of this realization knocks Roxanne sort of for a loop. She's never thought that about an adult before, never thought this person should not be in charge. It is a bad feeling—a scary feeling, like the whole world is suddenly careening out of control.

"Daddy?" she says, voice wobbly, tears filling her eyes.

Her dad must hear how upset she is, because he immediately softens his voice.

"Hey, now, it's okay!" he says, "It's okay, kiddo! You're a good kid; your mom and I know that! Tell you what, why don't you write an apology to Miss Simmons; would that make you feel better?"

Roxanne finds herself shaking her head, in spite of the fact that she knows her father can't see her.

"No," she whispers.

"Come on, sure it would!" her dad says. "Don't worry, Miss Simmons won't hold a grudge! I'm sure she knows what a good kid you are, too."

"I can't—" Roxanne's throat feels like it's closing up. "I can't write it."

"Of course you can, kiddo!" her father says enthusiastically. "Remember that great essay you wrote to get into this school—'education is the foundation for the skyscraper of life'—that was some good stuff! They gave you a scholarship for that essay, didn't they? Sure they did! You're great with words—you'll write a great letter."

"But—" Roxanne's voice breaks.

"Now, I gotta tell you," her dad says, "this school is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us, kiddo. Tuition for private schools with gifted programs is—" he gives a low whistle, "—whew, it's expensive! And that's why this place is so great for you! They gave you a scholarship, these people—this school said 'hey, your daughter is so smart, we'll pay you to send her to school here!' Isn't that neat? So you gotta make sure to take advantage of this opportunity, kiddo! Can you do that for me?"

Roxanne wipes at the tears on her cheeks.

"Yes," she whispers.

"Good girl!" her father says warmly. "I know you're gonna make me and your mom proud."

Her mother comes in later, after Roxanne's done crying.

Roxanne turns her face away when the door opens, but her mother must still see how blotchy her face is when she comes over for the phone. She hovers beside the bed for a long moment. Roxanne doesn't look up, but she can feel her mother's gaze on her.

"Sweetheart," her mother says at last, "do you want to talk about what happened at school today?"

Roxanne never wants to talk again, about anything, ever.

"No," she says. "I already talked to dad."

She glances up at her mother then, just in time to see the way she flinches at that, and Roxanne hates it when her mother looks like that.

"I mean—" Roxanne turns over on her side, so that she's facing her mother. "Can you sit with me for a little while?"

That does the trick; her mother's expression softens around the edges.

"Of course," she says, and sits down beside Roxanne.

She smooths down Roxanne's hair. Roxanne closes her eyes, and they sit in silence.

"Mom," Roxanne says after a few minutes, "do I really have to apologize to Miss Simmons? I really don't want to."

Her mother sighs.

"Oh, honey," she says. "I know it's hard. Doing the right thing is hard, sometimes. But you still have to do it."

* * *

Miss Simmons smiles her poison-sweet smile at Roxanne the next day when Roxanne brings the signed disciplinary note to her desk. When Roxanne hands her the apology letter she wrote last night, her smile goes even sweeter and Roxanne wants to rip up the sheet of paper that's filled with lies and throw it in the woman's face instead.

But she doesn't; she grits her teeth goes to sit with Syx at their table.

"All right, boys and girls," Miss Simmons says, folding Roxanne's letter up and placing it on the front of her desk where Roxanne can't avoid seeing it, "it's time for math class! Isn't that exciting?"

It's not exciting. They're still on times-tables. Times tables are boring, especially ever since Syx showed Roxanne algebra for the first time.

It's dumb that they're all still on times-tables. This is supposed to be a gifted school, but since oh-so-wonderful Wayne doesn't understand the concept of multiplication yet, the whole class is stuck with him on three-times-three-is-nine.

Roxanne finishes her worksheet with time to spare and glances over at Syx. He's already done, of course, and now he has one of the hands from the latest version of Minion's robot suit on the table and is using a little screwdriver to fiddle with the circuitry.

It's weird; Roxanne has never had a friend who was smarter than her before. At her old school, she was always the smartest kid in class. And even after she started going here, back before Syx transferred in, she was still the smartest.

It's a little worrying, being friends with someone like Syx. Who is she supposed to be if she isn't the smart one?

Syx glances up from the robotic hand and sees her looking at him. His expression goes uncertain.

"Are you—did I—do something wrong?" he asks in a whisper. Miss Simmons is patiently explaining that two-times-three is not the same as two-plus-three to Wayne for approximately the millionth time, so it's probably safe to talk, as long as they do it quietly.

"What?" Roxanne asks. "No, why?"

"You look—" Syx gestures at her face with the screwdriver that he's holding, "—sad. Mad. Worried? I don't—I thought maybe, um. Did you—get into trouble for yesterday? With your—with your parents?"

Roxanne sighs.

"Not really," she says. "They made me write her an apology, though."

Syx looks suitably disgusted at this. Roxanne giggles a little at his expression.

"So," he says, "you're not mad at me?"

"No," Roxanne tells him, and then, because he still looks worried, reaches out and pats him reassuringly on the shoulder.

He goes startle-still, the way he almost always does when Roxanne touches him, and then he puts down the screwdriver and very carefully and precisely reaches out and pats her on the shoulder in return. He pulls his hand away sharply and glances at her face, looking to make sure he's done it right. As though shoulder pats are a very serious business and it's terribly important that he perform them correctly.

Roxanne smiles at him and he gives a sigh of relief, picks up his screwdriver, and turns back to the robotic hand.

She doesn't have to be the smart one Roxanne decides. She can be the one who understands things like hugging and shoulder pats and who reminds people about practical things like lunch time (seriously, Syx, you can finish the hovercraft blueprint later, also, raspberry cookies are for eating, not drawing with).

* * *

"We're not playing," Roxanne blurts out, stepping close to Syx, so that their shoulders brush.

Wayne's nose scrunches up.

"It's gym class," he says, "you have to play."

Roxanne feels her stomach twist unpleasantly, like it's filled with worms.

"No," she says.

Syx glances at her; she sees it out of the corner of her vision. He looks just as surprised as Wayne. Clearly, it's never occurred to either of them that you can just refuse to participate in gym class.

Honestly, it hadn't ever occurred to Roxanne before, either, not until the moment that they were all moving towards the wall.

Wayne frowns, the arm that isn't cradling the dodge ball going to his hip. The other kids draw away from Syx and Roxanne.

"I'm telling," Wayne says.

The queasy feeling in Roxanne's stomach gets worse.

"Fine," she says, instead of throwing up like she wants to.

That doesn't seem to be the answer Wayne wanted. His mouth turns down even further and his eyes go narrow.

"You're ruining everything," Wayne says. "You're supposed to play. Why won't you play like you're supposed to?"

"Why won't you follow the right rules for dodge ball?" Roxanne counters. "We don't want to just stand there while you throw balls at us! I told you, that's not how you play!"

"I could make you."

Roxanne gasps and takes half a step back.

Wayne—Wayne is strong enough to lift Syx in the air one-handed and he's fast enough to run across the whole schoolyard in less than a second and he can fly and he can shoot lasers out of his eyes and he's standing there looking at her, head turned to the side, an expression of consideration on his face and he could, couldn't he? He could make her, he could hurt her.

"You," she says, voice low and uneven, "are a bully."

Wayne's mouth falls open. He flushes a dull red color.

"I am not!"

"Bully," she says.

"I'm not! You're just—everybody likes me!"

"They don't like you," Roxanne says, because if she doesn't say it, she's going to keep backing away from him and she won't. "They're scared of you. It's not the same thing."

Wayne's face twists in rage and—is that a little bit of red light in his eyes?

Beside Roxanne, Syx takes a sharp breath.

"You're—you're stupid!" Wayne shouts.

"You're stupid," Syx says, voice high and tight, edging away from Roxanne. Wayne's head snaps around and his eyes focus on Syx.

"You're stupider!" Wayne says to Syx, who is still moving away, not from Wayne, but from Roxanne. What is he doing?

"You," Syx says, "times infinity!"

Wayne's mouth opens and closes a few times.

"You," he says finally, "times infinity—plus one!"

"That's not mathemat-ically posible," Syx points out. "You're just proven my point!" He smiles, over-bright and slightly manic.

Wayne's eyes flash red again, and then—

"Little blue freak!" he shouts.

He throws the ball at Syx.

It hits him, hard, too hard, in the stomach, and sends him flying backwards. He falls, flat on his back, on the ground, with an audible smack. Roxanne gives a little cry and runs over to him, throws herself onto her knees beside him.

His eyes are wide, mouth open, and he's making these horrible gasping noises and the others are laughing—they're laughing.

Wayne is beside her shoulder, suddenly, hovering there.

"Hey, uh, are you—" he says, sounding a little worried. "I didn't mean—"

"Go away," Roxanne whispers, hands fluttering uselessly at Syx's shoulders. "Go away go away go away right now—"

Wayne hesitates, hanging in the air.

Syx rolls away from her, over to his side, pushes himself up on a hand an an elbow, and retches onto the ground.

Everybody laughs even harder.

* * *

Syx doesn't have to stand in the Bad Corner, not once, all day long, but that's mostly because he spends the rest of the day after gym class curled up in a ball behind the Art Board, out of the way. Miss Simmons doesn't even offer to let him call home.

Wayne doesn't have to stand in the Bad Corner, either, since he tells Miss Simmons that he's sorry, that it was an accident. Miss Simmons tells him of course it was an accident and that's it. That's the end of it.

Roxanne bites down on the insides of her cheeks so hard she tastes blood, wanting to shout you said breaking the rules on accident was just as bad as breaking them on purpose you said you said YOU SAID. But she doesn't shout it, so she doesn't have to stand in the Bad Corner, either.

It should feel like a victory over herself (kiddo, you gotta get some tact) but it really doesn't.

* * *

Wayne must feel a little bad, though, because the next time Roxanne says that she and Syx aren't playing during gym class, he rolls his eyes and turns away.

"Whatever," he says.

Annie gets picked last instead of Syx. Roxanne, sitting beneath the jungle gym with Syx and Minion, sees the look of terror that comes over Annie's face, right before the balls start to fly, and is a little dismayed at how pleased it makes her feel.

Annie had laughed, when Syx was on the ground, throwing up and struggling to breathe.

"Are you okay?" Syx asks, eyes on Roxanne's face, a worried line between his eyebrows.

"Fine," she says. Her voice sounds troubled, she notices. Minion must notice, too, because he rolls towards her so that his ball nudges against her arm, like he does when Syx is upset.

Roxanne puts her hand on Minions sphere, just like Syx always does.

Syx reaches out with hesitant fingers and pats her exactly twice on the shoulder. Roxanne takes a shaky breath.

"I'm fine," she says. "Tell me about the electrons again."


	3. Chapter 3

"What would you like to do," Roxanne's mother asks at breakfast, "for your birthday party, this year, sweetheart? It's still a while away, but I thought we should start planning early. I know it falls on one of your father's weekends, so I was thinking you could have something here the weekend before."

Roxanne shrugs and stirs her eggs with her fork, mixing the yolk with the white. Her mother takes another drink of coffee.

"You could have a sleepover, would you like that? You could invite those girls you told me about. What were their names? Laura, Meredith, and—what was the other one?"

"Lisa, Miranda, and Annie." Roxanne makes a face at her eggs. "We aren't really friends any more."

"Oh." Her mother turns her coffee cup in her hands. "Did you have a fight or something?"

"Sort of."

"Well, I'm sure they're just as tired of fighting as you are, sweetheart. Why don't you try talking to them about it?"

"Maybe," Roxanne says.

"It's no fun not having any friends," says her mother.

Roxanne puts down her fork and takes a breath.

"Well, I have made a friend," she says in a rush. "His name's Syx, he's in my class, and I was wondering if I could have him over for my birthday and maybe his—" she stops for a moment, stuck for a word to describe Minion. He's certainly not a pet, and he's not a servant either, even if he does call Syx 'sir'; Syx and Minion both made identical expressions of distaste when she asked them that. They're more like…family of some kind?

"—cousin," Roxanne finishes, "too."

Her mother frowns, looking down into her coffee cup. She taps her fingernails against the ceramic handle of the cup one at a time: pointer, middle, ring, pinky.

"If this friend of your is a boy," she says warningly, "then you won't be able to have him over for a sleepover."

"But we could do something else?"

Her mother takes another sip of coffee.

"If that's what you decide you want to do," she says. Roxanne grins, bouncing a little in her chair. "But you should still talk to your other friends, you know. I'm sure they're ready to stop fighting, too."

* * *

Roxanne frowns at the still blank paper clipped to her easel. She swirls her paintbrush in her cup of water and frowns some more.

They're covering watercolors in art class now. Roxanne had been excited for that, but she is very not excited about what they've been assigned to paint.

It's supposed to be a picture of their home.

Roxanne isn't sure what to put in her picture. Her mom's apartment building? She does spend more time there than she does at her dad's, but, somehow, that just doesn't seem fair, leaving him out of the picture like that. But she can't paint her dad's apartment building, either, because that, also, clearly isn't right.

What she really wants to paint is her old house, the one with the yellow paint and the rickety porch and the screen door that was always banging. She can still picture it in her head.

But she can't paint that house because she doesn't live there any more. Her dad moved out two years ago and Roxanne and her mother moved out six months after that.

Somebody else lives in that yellow house now. Some other kid jumps on the porch steps to make them creak and goes to sleep in Roxanne's old room and climbs the tree in the backyard that was just the perfect size and shape for a treehouse (Roxanne's dad always promised that they'd make one together someday, but they never got around to it).

Roxanne chews on her lip and sneaks a look at Syx's easel.

He doesn't seem to have made much more progress than her. His paper is mostly blank, too, except for his name, written in the lower right corner, and, below that, a weird little scribble.

Roxanne looks thoughtfully at the scribble. She's seen it before, of course; it's the same one Syx always scrawls on his papers, beneath his name: a spiky, uneven M shape flanked by two curved, jagged lines, sort of like lightning bolt-parentheses.

"Syx," Roxanne asks, gesturing to the mark with the dry end of her brush, "what is that?"

Syx, who has been regarding his paper with a fierce gaze of concentration, blinks and looks over at her, sees her pointing, and glances briefly at the mark.

"Oh," he says, "that's my—that's how you write 'Syx' in—my language."

Roxanne feels her eyes go round. She scrutinizes the mark—Syx's name—even more closely.

"How can it be, though?" she asks. "It starts and ends with the same shape."

"Ah, no," he says. "You're reading it left to right? Or—right to left? It doesn't read like that, it, um, you read it from the center out."

Roxanne tips her head.

She points at the 'M' shape.

"This is the 'S' part?" she glances at Syx. He nods. She points at each of the lightning bolts. "X''?" He nods again. She frowns. "Where's the 'Y'?"

"There isn't any 'Y' in the original," he says. "My language doesn't have the same syllable-vowel requirements as English."

"Syllable-vowel requirements?"

"Yes, you know, 'one vowel per syllable'? That was difficult to get used to, let me tell you! Almost as bad as the illogical alphabet!"

Roxanne blinks at him.

"What's wrong with the alphabet?" she asks.

"So many things are wrong with the alphabet!" he gestures with his paintbrush. "Take the letter 'C' for instance—it's a completely unnecessary letter! It has no sound of it's own; it either sounds just like 'K' or just like 'S'. So why is it there at all?"

"Well, you need it," Roxanne points out after a moment of thought, "to make the 'ch' sound."

"But why? Why isn't 'ch' it's own letter? It has a distinct sound! And yet it's entirely missing from your alphabet, along with 'sh' and 'th'—and don't get me started on 'th'—why, in the name of Occam's Razor, are there two variations on how 'T-H' is pronounced? And 'S-C-H'—that's got five different variations! Why, I ask you, why! And 'G-H' and 'P-H'—why do those even exist? What's wrong with 'F'? And what's with the confusion between 'J' and 'G'? And double letters and silent letters—never mind all the sounds that English doesn't even bother to include, like—" he makes a strange, sliding sound somewhere in between 'j' and 'shh' a, "or—" he clicks his tongue, "or—" he makes a rolling-rrr noise. "And then! People tell you to 'sound it out' as though that's a method that's ever going to yield anything but highly unsatisfactory results in a language with shoddy phonetic construction and inconsistent rules for pronounce-iation!"

He waves his paintbrush one last time for emphasis, scattering droplets of black paint on the carpet, then drops the brush onto the table and collapses into his chair, putting his hands over his face.

"Sh, sh!" Roxanne says, because Miss Simmons is looking over at them with an expression of annoyance. "It's okay; I didn't realize you—felt so strongly about the alphabet." Minion swims around in his ball, looking distressed.

"And then," Syx says lowly, face still hidden by his hands, "everybody acts like you're some sort of imbecilic— _alien_ —for not being able to say their ridiculous trick-question words correctly."

Roxanne, who has been hovering by Syx's side, her hand on his back, sits down in the chair next to his. He doesn't look up, doesn't take his hands from his face. "It—bothers you," Roxanne says slowly, "when you pronounce words wrong?"

"Yes," Syx says quietly. He lets out a shuddery breath. "I mean, sometimes I say them like that as a—protest against the sheer ridiculousness of this nonsensical language, but there's a difference between being wrong on purpose and being wrong because you're too _stupid_ to get it right."

"Syx," Roxanne says, "Syx, you are definitely not stupid." He doesn't answer, just continues to breathe, uneven around the edges like he's trying not to cry. "It worries me, sometimes," Roxanne continues in a small voice, because she thinks maybe he needs to hear this, "how smart you are. I worry that you'll get bored with me because I'm not as smart as you are."

Syx looks up from his hands at that, green eyes fixing on her face in an expression of disbelief.

"Bored with you?" he demands. " _Bored_ with _you_? I could never get—and you're not—" he stops and puts his hands down on the table. "You're the smartest person I know," he says seriously.

Roxanne makes a skeptical face.

"No, but really," he says. "I mean, you—just as an—you don't have any trouble pronouncing words correctly."

"Everybody has trouble pronouncing words sometimes," Roxanne says. "If you haven't ever heard a word said, if you've just read it, then it's really hard to—" she considers. "Is that—"

"—part of my problem?" Syx finishes. He looks thoughtful. "Possibly? I hadn't considered—I—my uncles are very—important to me, but an extensive vocabulary is not really a quality given much weight at home." He pauses. "Except for in certain, very specific areas of language that Warden says I'm not supposed to copy, ever."

"Okay," Roxanne says, "okay, so." She takes a breath, feeling strange about this, but Syx had said that it bothered him, and he'd called her the smartest person he knew, so—"Would you like me to, you know, tell you? When you've said something wrong? I won't make fun of you," she continues in a rush, "and I won't try to make you say something the right way if you've decided to say it wrong because you want to, and I won't be right all the time, maybe, and you can say no, but I just thought it might help."

"I—" Syx bites his lips. "Yes, I—I would like that, please."

Roxanne lets out a breath that she didn't know she was holding.

So it seems she isn't just the one who knows about shoulder pats and remembers lunch time; she's also the one who knows about pronunciation. Which is—probably a good place to start.

"All right," Roxanne says. "All right. So. Um, the first thing—it's 'pronunciation', not 'pronounce-iation'. I'm not really sure why, since you do say 'pronounce', not 'pronunce'; I think maybe it's one of those things you were talking about, the ones that just don't make sense—"

Syx listens to her intently.

* * *

"Can I sit with you?"

Roxanne pauses in the middle of biting into her bologna sandwich. Syx, who has been using his strawberry jelly and marshmallow fluff sandwich mostly to gesture with, stops waxing lyrical about the new power source for Minon's suit that he's designed. Minion, who has been darting at the animal crackers that Syx dropped in his ball, snapping them up and gulping them down, also stops. All of them look up.

Annie is standing next to their lunch table, leaning on her crutches and looking generally unhappy.

Behind her, Roxanne can see Lisa and Miranda whispering together. As she's looking at them, Lisa catches her gaze. She turns and says something to Miranda, and the two of them laugh.

Annie's cheeks flush red.

"Um," Roxanne says. She glances over at Syx, but he's still staring at Annie with an expression of surprise. She looks back at Annie _(that cruel twist of satisfaction at Annie's dismay when everybody ganged up on her in gym class, the sick guilt that followed, her mother saying 'ready to stop fighting, too')_.

"Um," Roxanne says again. "Sure."

"Thanks," Annie says, and sits down next to Roxanne. She opens her lunchbox, takes out her own sandwich, takes out her carton of apple juice, punctures the box with the straw, takes a drink.

"Are you—" Syx breaks the silence, "going—to be friends with us now?"

Annie shrugs.

"I guess," she says.

Roxanne feels a rush of irrational jealousy. Syx is her friend. She fights the feeling down. Syx can have more than one friend. Syx deserves to have lots of friends.

She already has a place with him, she tells herself. She is important. She is the shoulder-pat and pronunciation guide. Syx said that he wouldn't get bored with her. He _said_.

"Are you going to be friends with Minion, too?" Syx asks.

Annie takes another sip of her juice. She glances at Minion's ball.

"With your fish?" she asks. She raises her eyebrows. "Yeah, okay, whatever."

It's not a very enthusiastic response by any means, but Syx looks terribly pleased nonetheless. Roxanne fights down another pulse of jealousy.

Syx smiles at the tabletop for several minutes until Roxanne nudges him and gestures to his sandwich. He blinks owlishly at it, as though he's forgotten that he's holding it in his hand, dripping strawberry jelly and marshmallow fluff all over everything, and then he takes a bite.

* * *

Annie sits behind the supply shed with them during recess and Roxanne is probably a bad person for wanting to scream GO AWAY at the top of her lungs the whole time.

Minion doesn't talk at all during recess, just keeps swimming around and around in his bowl, pretending to be a regular fish, like he does during class.

Syx frowns at him, but Minion pretends not to notice.

Roxanne's probably a bad person for how much better this makes her feel, too.

* * *

Syx tells Annie that she can sit with them during gym class, but Annie says she doesn't want to risk getting in trouble for refusing to participate.

Roxanne's' definitely a bad person for how relieved she is to hear that, especially since Annie still gets picked last for dodgeball.

"So are you going to start building the new power source tonight?" Roxanne asks Syx, and he turns towards her, and they pretend that they can't hear what's happening on the other side of the schoolyard.


	4. Chapter 4

"A sleepover?" Roxanne's dad takes a bite of his cornflakes. "Sure, kiddo; don't see why not."

Roxanne grins and pours a second helping of Fruity Marshmallow Krispies into her own cereal bowl. Operation: _Get Dad to Agree to a Sleepover With Syx Since Mom Won't_ has been successfully implemented.

She picks up her spoon and quickly begins to devour the cereal; it goes all soggy and gloppy if you leave it in the milk too long. For a couple of minutes, Roxanne and her dad eat in silence.

"Dad," Roxanne says after a while, "people deserve second chances, don't they?"

"Sure they do, kiddo," her dad says, standing to put his bowl in the sink. "That's why I do the job that I do, you know? I mean, take your average Joe: he gets in a bar fight, hits someone a bit too hard, gets picked up for involuntary manslaughter—nine times out of ten, you let him off the hook, he's gonna be so grateful you'll never have to worry about him ever again! It's not like he's gonna be running around bumping people off left and right! So you try to get him off with a fine, a short sentence, give the man a second chance." He stops and clears his throat a bit awkwardly. "I mean, uh—let's not tell your mom I said—"

"Involuntary manslaughter's different than murder," Roxanne murmurs thoughtfully.

Her dad looks startled and then beams at her with approval.

"Hey, that's right!" he says. "I didn't know you were interested in this stuff, kiddo; we'll make a lawyer out of you yet!" He winks at her, and then looks a bit sheepish. "But maybe don't mention to your mom that we talked about this, okay? She's got definite ideas about age-appropriate stuff, always hated me bringing work home, even, and I, for one, do not want to get—" he holds up his hands as though to warn off an invisible attack, assumes an expression of terror, "one of _those_ phone calls!"

Roxanne giggles and he smiles, going back to rinsing his bowl.

"Yeah, okay," she says. If her mom doesn't talk to her dad at all for the next month or so, maybe she won't find out about Operation: _Get Dad to Agree to a Sleepover With Syx_.

"So second chances, I would say, yes," her dad says, turning off the sink and reaching for a towel to dry his hands.

"Right," Roxanne says, and takes a breath, steeling herself. "Then I might want to invite one more person to the sleepover."

* * *

Roxanne sighs and looks over at Annie's easel. Annie's picture is almost finished; she's painting in the grass now. Roxanne glances over at Syx; he's painting furiously. She looks at her own paper. Still blank.

This is the last day to work on their watercolor 'home' paintings. They're moving on to modeling clay next week.

Roxanne dips her brush in the black paint and holds it up, hesitates a moment, and then draws a line from the top of her page to the bottom, dividing it in half. There. Problem solved.

She rinses her brush vigorously in her cup of water, and then dips it into the red paint (it still goes a little maroon, in spite of all the rinsing) and starts to paint the outline of her father's apartment building on the right side of the paper.

It's not until she's almost finished with the brown shape of her mother's apartment building, on the left side of the paper, that Roxanne glances over at Syx's page.

He's painted a big gray building with barred windows and a tall fence around it: the Metro City Prison for the Criminally Gifted; Roxanne recognizes it. And hanging in the sky above the painted building is—

"The sun's supposed to be yellow," Annie points out, "not blue."

"It isn't the sun," Syx says quietly.

"Is it your planet?" Roxanne asks, making a guess. Syx hasn't ever told her about his planet. She kind of always got the feeling that he didn't want to talk about it, like something bad happened there (it'd have to be bad, wouldn't it, for his parents to just leave him on Earth all alone?)

Syx nods and closes his watercolor box.

"Yes," he says, without looking at her, "that's my home."

Roxanne opens her mouth to answer.

"But it can't be your home," Annie says, "because you don't live there any more. That doesn't make sense."

Roxanne thinks of the yellow house with its perfect-for-a-treehouse tree.

"Yes, it does," she says.

"Besides," Annie continues, "it doesn't belong in the picture, anyway. Your planet doesn't float around in the sky where we can see it from the ground."

"No, it doesn't 'float around' in the sky," Syx says flatly, looking at the page, at the blue circle on it. "It doesn't 'float around' anywhere any more. At all."

A cold feeling settles in the pit of Roxanne's stomach.

"What do you mean?" she asks slowly.

"My planet," he says, still looking at the paper. "It's gone." He looks up at Roxanne finally. "It got pulled into a black hole. It doesn't exist any more."

Roxanne covers her mouth in horror.

"The same thing happened to Wayne's planet," he continues, face so calm that it's completely expressionless and that is wrong, so wrong; Syx's face should never look like that.

"Syx," Roxanne says, and moves to put her arms around him.

"What do you mean," Wayne says loudly from three tables over, " _my_ planet?"

Syx stiffens in Roxanne's arms and starts to pull away. She lets him, reluctantly.

"Um," Syx says to Wayne. "Your—you know, your planet. The—the planet that you're from?"

Wayne stands, face pulling into a sneer. The rest of the class falls into a hush, eyes on Wayne and Syx.

"What are you even _talking_ about?" Wayne demands, folding his arms. "I'm not an _alien_ like _you_. I'm a _real_ _person_."

Roxanne sucks in a breath and grabs hold of the back of a nearby chair.

"Ah," Syx says, eyes darting, an expression of confusion on his face. "You are—you don't remember?—we came here in pods!—your planet, it was in the Glaupunkt system!"

"You're making up words, now?" Wayne asks scornfully.

"I am not making this up!" Syx insists, raising his voice. "You are from a different planet! We came here on the same day, in pods! There was an asteroid belt; you bumped into me, _you have to remember this!_ "

"Stop lying!" Wayne shouts, face red.

"I am not _lying_!" Syx screams back. "It was your _planet_ ; you can't just forget your _planet_ —"

"That is enough," Miss Simmons says coldly.

Syx stops, chest moving rapidly as he pants for breath. Wayne is breathing hard, too, looking at Syx like he wants to—

 _(hurt him **hit him with those twin beams of hot red light** I could make you **look at his eyes Roxanne look at his eyes** —)_

Roxanne grips the chair harder; she can throw it, distract Wayne, make him look away—

"Wayne," Miss Simmons says, "take Syx here to the Bad Corner, please." She smiles, thin and pointed. "We don't tell lies in this classroom."

The red light dies down out of Wayne's eyes, and a smug expression replaces his look of rage. He swoops over to Syx and picks him up none-too-gently by the collar, yanking him off his feet (Syx makes a slight choking sound) and flies him over to the corner, where he drops him, turning him with a rough shove so that he's facing into the cabinet.

Wayne sticks his tongue out at Syx's back and blows a raspberry at him, then flies back over to his table.

Roxanne swallows and tries to breathe normally, tries to loosen her hold on the chair.

It takes her a minute.

* * *

Syx seems to be more upset by the fact that Wayne has apparently forgotten his own planet than about his own unjust punishment or the way that Wayne very nearly fried him with his laser eyes, a circumstance that Roxanne, personally, feels warrants a little more attention.

"He forgot his _planet_ ," Syx says over and over again, when they're behind the supply shed during recess. "His whole _planet_ , and he just forgot it. Like it never even existed."

"You could have died!" Roxanne says for the third time.

"A whole planet of people, generations and generations, all that—all that history," Syx looks like he's about to cry. "And now it's all just _gone_. Like it didn't even matter. Like it never even happened." He blinks rapidly; Minion rolls over to bump into his knee. "At least Minion and I remember some things about our planet," he says in a low voice, placing his hand on Minion's ball.

Roxanne puts her hand over his on Minion's sphere.

"Do you—want to tell me some—" she starts.

"Are we going to do something now?" Annie asks, rolling her eyes.

* * *

" _You_ don't think Wayne's an alien, do you?" Annie asks Roxanne on the bus. Her tone says that _she_ , clearly, doesn't believe it.

"Yeah," Roxanne snaps, "I do. Maybe he can zap me with his eye lasers," she adds, raising her voice a bit, so that it carries to the back of the bus, "if he wants to prove how human he is."

It's a stupid thing to say; Wayne can zap her with his eye lasers, can't he, if she makes him mad enough, but Roxanne can't seem to stop herself.

"But he can't be an—" Annie drops her voice like she's saying a bad word, "— _alien_. Aliens are all weird looking and weird colored—"

"Like Syx, you mean?" Roxanne asks, eyes narrowing dangerously.

Annie must notice, because she huffs out a breath.

"All I'm saying," she says, "is that Wayne looks like a real person to me."

Roxanne freezes.

 _Not a real person_ , Wayne had said, and Syx hadn't even argued, hadn't even looked offended.

"Don't you ever," Roxanne hisses, leaning close to Annie's face, "say that again."

Annie rears back in surprise and some fear.

"What's your problem?" she asks, voice high and squeaky.

"Don't you ever," Roxanne doesn't back off at all, "say _real_ _person_ again like Syx _isn't_ one."

"Jeez, lighten up, Roxy!" Annie says. "I just meant 'not like an alien', is all!"

Roxanne leans back and looks out the window.

"Did you," she says icily.

The two of them don't talk for the rest of the bus ride.

* * *

"Mom," Roxanne says that night, pushing peas around her plate. "If one of your friends'—you know, other friends—is saying something behind their back—should you tell them?"

Her mother sighs and wipes her mouth on her napkin.

"Sweetheart," she says, "that's the way that fights get started. Haven't you had enough of that sort of thing? You don't want to end up alone again, do you?"

Roxanne actually physically flinches, struck by the mental picture of Syx sitting side by side with Annie, of him turning toward Annie, turning away from Roxanne, turning his back on her.

"No," Roxanne whispers. "No, I don't want that to happen. You're right; I won't say anything."

"Okay, so maybe this will help you picture it," Syx says. "We'll do an atom of deuterium; that's a type of hydrogen, which—isn't really relevant it's—it's a really simple one; it'll give you a good idea of the general—anyway! In the middle of the atom—" he takes Roxanne's arm and moves the two of them a few steps away from the supply shed, "—is the nucleus. That's where the protons and the neutrons are. Neutrons aren't positive or negative. Neutron," he gestures to himself, the assumes a stiff, robotic pose. "I do not feel feelings," he says in a bored tone. Roxanne snickers; his eyes flick towards her, but he doesn't break his rigid stance. "Unsweetened oatmeal is an adequate foodstuff," he adds, and Roxanne laughs again. Syx grins and drops the act.

"Protons," he says, putting his hands on her shoulders, "have a positive charge."

"Oh! Um," says Roxanne, and puts on a wild grin, bouncing on her toes, "Everything is wonderful! I love unsweetened oatmeal; it's just the best!"

Syx laughs.

"And electrons—" he points at Annie, seated over by the wall of the supply shed, "—have a negative charge."

Syx and Roxanne look at Annie expectantly.

"This is boring," she says.

"Just like that!" Sys says. "All right, so, the electrons—"

"Move around," Roxanne finishes, "I remember that."

"Yes! The electrons move around the nucleus, which—" he hesitates a moment, and then wraps his arms around Roxanne. "This is not an entirely accurate representation," he says, arms still around her. "But for an accurate representation, you'd have to be in several places at once, and there's not really an opt—"

"This is boring," Annie says again, louder. "I want to do something else." She scuffs the dirt hard with the foot that isn't in a cast. Minion, who has already rolled several feet away from her, startles and rolls even farther. "It's all _science_ and _hugging_ with you guys and it's _boring_."

"Oh," Syx says, looking downcast as he pulls away from Roxanne. "I didn't—I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be boring. Is there—what would you like to do?"

Annie scuffs at the ground again, scowling.

"I don't know," she says. "Something _not boring."_

 _"_ Okay," Syx says slowly, clearly thinking hard.

 _But **I** was interested_ Roxanne wants to say. She bites the inside of her cheeks instead as Syx tries to come up with a way to entertain stupid Annie.

* * *

"—definitely the coolest!" Roxanne protests.

"Second coolest!" Syx waves an admonishing finger. "Second coolest, I will give you, hands down, Princess Leia, yes, but! Darth Vader—"

" _Loses_ , which makes him less cool than—"

"—has a _cape_ ; it doesn't get any cooler than a _cape_ and besides that, he doesn't _lose_ , he switches sides, remember, which is the only reason that the good guys are able to win! Am I right?" He turns to Minion expectantly, but Minion, who is still refusing to talk around Annie, gives him a blank look. Syx rolls his eyes and looks at Annie expectantly instead. "Aren't I right?" he repeats.

"I don't like Star Wars," Annie says.

Roxanne and Syx both gape at her in appalled shock.

"It's for boys," she adds.

Syx gives Roxanne a look of absolute horror, which she returns, with a feeling of offended irritation underneath it. Was that meant to be aimed at her?

Syx closes his eyes for a moment, emotions playing across his face, and Roxanne can see that he's forming a perfect rebuttal of Annie's ridiculous assertion, and then he opens his eyes and visibly swallows the words down.

"Well, um," he says, "what—kind of movies do you like to watch, then?"

Roxanne wants to scream.

* * *

"It's pronounced 'wheat', you know," Annie says scornfully, "not 'w-heat'."

Syx goes absolutely still for a moment. So does Roxanne.

"Please," he says quietly, "I would like you not to—um, please don't do that."

Annie raises her eyebrows.

"Roxanne does it all the time," she says.

"That's Roxanne," Syx says firmly, and Roxanne feels like she can breathe again. "We have an arrangement. Please, I—don't feel comfortable with—"

"Whatever," Annie says, turning away.

Syx flushes.

"Well, um," he says to Annie after a moment, "which do you think is less gross, oatmeal or cream of—" he screws up his face in concentration, "—weee-yt?"

Annie shrugs and continues doodling on her cast.

* * *

Annie gets her cast off that Tuesday.

And Tommy gets picked last for dodgeball instead.

Roxanne, from her place beneath the jungle gym, sees Annie move to stand next to Miranda, sees Miranda turn and say something to her, sees Lisa join them, sees all three of them start to throw their balls at Tommy.

She sees that Annie throws hers the hardest.

* * *

When they come in from gym class, Annie's got her arms linked with Miranda and Lisa. Syx smiles brightly at Annie, who turns away from him pointedly to whisper to Lisa and Miranda. Syx looks confused, and then hurt and dismayed. Wayne smirks.

Annie sits between Miranda and Lisa during music and the three of them snicker whenever they look in Syx's direction.

Roxanne moves closer to Syx, so that they're pressed side to side, as though, if they're just close enough, she can keep him safe.

* * *

"You," Roxanne hisses, catching Annie's elbow as they're waiting in line to get on the bus, "you are not invited to my birthday party."

Annie yanks her arm away and tosses her hair.

"Like anyone," she says, "wants to come to your stupid birthday party anyway."

And then she takes Miranda's hand and pulls her to the front of the line, leaving Roxanne standing by herself.


	5. Chapter 5

On Thursday, Tommy asks if he can sit with Syx and Roxanne during lunch.

Roxanne hesitates. Tommy is pretty quiet, usually. He hasn't ever said anything mean to her or Syx to their faces, she knows. He still joins in when everybody laughs at Syx, but—

—people can change, right? There's good in everyone and everybody deserves a second chance.

Roxanne looks over at Syx. He's regarding Tommy through narrowed eyes, but when he catches Roxanne's gaze, he gives a hesitant nod.

"Okay," Roxanne says.

Tommy sits down.

"Are you going to be friends with us now?" Sys asks, tilting his head critically.

Tommy, opening a pudding cup, stops. His mouth opens and closes a few times.

"Uh, yeah, sure," he says.

"Hm," says Syx.

He doesn't ask Tommy if he wants to be friends with Minion.

* * *

"All right, so—" Syx says, "you understand the basic configuration of an atom?"

Roxanne nods. Tommy yawns.

"The neutrons and the protons," she repeats, "are in the middle, in the nucleus, and the electrons move around them."

"Right," Syx says, "and you know about the charges thing, that protons—"

"Are positive and electrons are negative," Roxanne says.

"Exactly! And neutrons?"

"Don't feel feelings and think unsweetened oatmeal is okay."

Syx grins.

"They're neutral, yes," he says, "they don't have a charge. Well! Let's talk about bonding! Bonds are what stick the atoms together to make molecules. In Ionic bonding—atoms always want to be balanced, you see? If they have too many electrons, they are too negative—" he makes a tragic face, "'—woe is me! Despair and suffering!'" Roxanne laughs and Syx smiles back at her, "—and if they have don't have enough electrons, they're too positive—" he bounces up and down in a parody of excitement, "'Wow, I am just so happy I think I might die!' Neither of those things are good! That's why an atom always wants to have the same amount of electrons as it does protons. To be balanced. With me so far?"

Roxanne nods; Syx looks over at Tommy, who shrugs.

"Good, okay—well, let's say that—Roxanne, you're an atom, all right?" She nods. "And—" Syx looks at Tommy, "—would you like to be an atom?" he asks politely.

"Uh, no thanks," Tommy says, wrinkling his nose.

"Right," Syx says, sounding unsurprised. "So you're an atom, Roxanne, yes? And you've just lost one of your electrons, so you're too positive."

"'Wow!'" Roxanne says, "'I'm just so happy I think I might die!'"

"Exactly! And I am an atom that has too many electrons, which means I am too negative." He makes the tragic face again. "'Woe is me! Despair and suffering!' So, neither of us are balanced. We both want to be balanced, so what do we do?" He holds up a finger dramatically, and then reaches down and grabs Roxanne's hand. "We _bond!_ Now, we are a molecule! Now we are balanced. And that's it, that's an Ionic bond! Do you get it?"

"I think so," Roxanne says, frowning slightly. "But what about the neutrons?"

Syx waves a dismissive hand.

"The neutrons aren't important in bonding; they're just sitting around eating unsweetened oatmeal, or something. Now, in Covalent bonds—"

* * *

"—hold my ha-and!" Tommy says in a sing-song voice to Wayne, "I'm sa-ad."

Wayne snickers meanly and the other kids, as if they've been waiting for his cue, all laugh, too.

Beside Roxanne, Syx is very still, his knuckles pale around the pencil that he's clutching.

"Oooh, of course I'll hold your hand," Annie says, in a nasty, high-pitched voice, and—is that supposed to be Roxanne that she's pretending to be? "I love you so much, I think we should get married."

Roxanne feels herself go hot, and then cold.

"Maybe if we hold hands long enough," Lisa chimes in, not to be outdone, "you can turn me _blue_ like _you_."

Everybody laughs again, and then Wayne butchers a song on the ukulele for music class.

* * *

Tommy is picked fourth for dodgeball, right after Annie and before Lisa.

Sam S., who Wayne says has the wrong kind of shoes, is picked last.

* * *

He asks to sit with Roxanne and Syx during lunch three days later.

Syx shrugs and looks away.

"Okay," says Roxanne.

Syx doesn't ask Sam S. if he's going to be friends with them now.

* * *

Sam S. comes to school on Monday with new shoes; his parents, he says, bought them as an early birthday present.

He also brings invitations to his birthday party; his parents are renting a hotel room and ordering pizza and there's going to be swimming.

He gives the first invitation to Wayne.

(There are invitations for everyone but Syx and Roxanne.)

Sam S. gets to sit next to Wayne that day at lunch.

Derick, who doesn't ever share the candy bars his mother sends in his lunchbox, gets picked last for dodgeball.

Derick gives his candy bar to Wayne the next day and doesn't ever ask to sit next to Syx and Roxanne at all.

Wayne unwraps the candy bar and divides it into different sized pieces. With great ceremony, he begins handing out the pieces to the children that surround him.

"Derick gets the biggest piece," Wayne says, "since he's such a good friend. And Sam S. gets the next one because it's going to be his birthday soon—"

"Can I have the next piece?" Annie asks eagerly.

"No!" Lisa says, elbowing her out of the way. "The next one's for me, cross-eyes!"

Wayne laughs and hands the piece of chocolate to Lisa.

Syx, watching the division of the candy bar, scowls darkly. Roxanne feels herself frowning, too.

* * *

Roxanne dips her brush in the green paint again.

They're doing oil paints in art now; Miss Simmons told them that they should paint 'a place they'd like to go'.

Roxanne is painting the treehouse that never got built in the backyard of her old house. Syx is painting something that Roxanne thinks might be the ocean, but it's a bit hard to tell because Syx has been on a modern art kick ever since he read that book about Expressionism. There's a lot of blue swirling brushstrokes which look like crashing waves and a dark shape which might be a ship, but Roxanne wouldn't swear to it.

He's absolutely engrossed in painting, squinting at the page, tilting his head from side to side to peer at it from different angles, paint splatters all over his hands and his clothes and his half of the table.

They're painting at their tables, instead of easels, today. The easels were an unfortunate casualty of Syx's latest experiment, an antigravity generator which, regrettably, exploded before he could even switch it on yesterday—something about one of the components being unstable; Roxanne hadn't exactly understood and Syx's explanation had been cut short when Wayne dragged Syx off to stand in the Bad Corner.

Roxanne and Syx's table escaped the inferno only slightly singed, but the easels were beyond saving. Miss Simmons had been quite bitter about that at the time of the explosion, and quite bitter again when she brought it up at the beginning of art class today, making a big production about how they would all have to paint at their tables since someone destroyed all of the easels.

Roxanne carefully paints the outline of a leaf. She draws back and regards it critically. She sighs. Too blobby again. Oil paints are difficult. She knows what she wants the picture to look like; she can imagine it perfectly in her head, but when she tries to actually—

"Can I sit with you?"

Roxanne looks up from her contemplation of her blobby leaves.

Lisa is standing next to their table, holding her half-finished painting and her brush.

Behind Lisa, Annie whispers something to Miranda and giggles viciously. Roxanne catches the words 'put down plastic first'.

Lisa goes scarlet.

There's a rumor going around the class that Lisa wets the bed. Roxanne is pretty sure Annie is the source of that rumor; she's never really forgiven Lisa for her 'cross-eyes' comment.

But regardless of whether Annie's the one who started the rumor, it's led to a shocking change in the social order of the classroom. Lisa, once a particular favorite of Wayne's, is now almost as much of a pariah as Roxanne. She's been picked last for dodgeball for a week and a half straight and Wayne makes her sit at the far end of the table and never gives her any candy during lunch.

And now she's standing next to Roxanne and Syx's table, looking embarrassed and miserable and ashamed, asking if she can sit with them.

Roxanne blinks and stares up at Lisa, hesitating.

"No," Syx says.

Roxanne glances over at him, startled. He's looking at Lisa with a hard expression in his eyes.

Lisa gapes at him for a moment.

"What?" she asks.

"I said _no_ ," Syx repeats firmly. " _No_ , you cannot sit with us. You are not nice. I do not like you, and I do not want you to sit with us."

Annie gives a cruel peal of laughter. The whole class is staring now; Lisa's face contorts in an expression of fury.

"I'll sit here if I want to," she hisses, and slaps her paper down on the table.

Syx's mouth goes flat and thin.

"Syx," Roxanne says in an undertone.

"Better not sit so close," Syx says loudly, still looking at Lisa, "wouldn't want to catch the _alien disease!_ Wouldn't want to wind up blue and bald and strange looking!"

"Syx," Roxanne whispers, "stop it, please."

"Isn't that what _Wayne says_ will happen?" Syx asks. "Isn't that what _you_ said would happen? It is; you mentioned it behind the supply shed that one day, don't you remember? You said—"

"Shut up, you _freak_ ," Lisa says, tears of rage in her eyes.

"—something like that, yes," Syx stands, shoving his chair backwards. "Well, the _freak_ doesn't want you to sit at this table. Why don't you go sit with your friends?" He smiles, bright and sharp and glinting, like a knife. "Oh, that's right," he adds, "you don't have any."

Lisa inhales sharply.

"What's happening here?" Miss Simmons asks.

Lisa turns to her, but Syx speaks first.

"I don't want her to sit at this table," he says.

Miss Simmons raises her eyebrows.

"Well," she says,"that isn't very nice, is it?"

"She has never been nice to _me_ ," Syx says, chin going up.

"We have a strict no-bullying policy in this classroom," Miss Simmons continues, as though Syx hasn't said anything at all.

Syx laughs. It's not a very happy sound.

"If you cannot refrain from bullying Lisa," Miss Simmons goes on, over the sound of Syx's choked, half-hysterical laughter, "then I don't think you need to participate in the rest of art class." She picks up his painting and smiles, all sugared venom. Then she folds the page in half, rips it very neatly down the middle, and drops it in the wastepaper basket.

Roxanne jerks to her feet, but Syx is already beside her, grabbing her wrist, holding her still. He shakes his head, just once, and then he's yanked away, up into the air, by Wayne, who pushes him into the corner with rather more force that is necessary. Syx's forehead smacks into the cabinet shelf when Wayne shoves him.

"There, now," Miss Simmons says, smiling around the classroom. "Let's get back to work, then!"

Everybody turns back to their pages and their paints. Lisa sits down at Syx and Roxanne's table.

Minion rolls his sphere across the table to Roxanne. She reaches out and places her hand on it. She's shaking, and she feels oddly hot and cold at the same time.

There's blue paint on her wrist from where Syx grabbed her, Roxanne notices distantly.

 _Miss Simmons threw away his painting. She threw it away._

"All I wanted to do," Lisa says, with a virtuous air, "was sit at this table."

"Shut. Up," Roxanne says through gritted teeth.

"You should be nicer," Lisa says. "Or I'll tell Miss Simmons that you're bullying me, too."

Roxanne goes still for half a second, and then picks up Minion's sphere.

"You do that," she tells Lisa. "I don't want you sitting with me, either," Roxanne announces loudly, to the room at large. She turns back to Lisa and smiles. "Have fun sitting all alone," she says, and she takes Minion and goes to stand with Syx.


	6. Chapter 6

They have to stay in the Bad Corner until gym class, and then Miss Simmons makes them go outside with everyone else.

It's a cold day; Miss Simmons, who is wearing a thin cotton shirt, shivers and tells them to go ahead and start the game and then she goes back into the schoolhouse to get her sweater.

Roxanne and Syx move towards the jungle gym, where they usually sit.

They don't make it there this time. Wayne flies down to hover in front of them, blocking their way, arms folded across his chest, gold stars glinting.

Roxanne pulls back instinctively, hand going out to catch hold of Syx's sleeve. She turns, intending to go around Wayne, but Nick and Derick are there. Syx turns them in the other direction, but Annie and Miranda are there, and—

Suddenly, Roxanne and Syx are surrounded, hemmed in on all sides, their entire class arranged in a ring around them.

Roxanne and Syx draw even closer together. Syx holds Minion's ball very tightly to his chest; Minion is fluttering around inside it in an agitated sort of way.

"You are bad," Wayne says, pointing at Syx. He squares his shoulders and puffs out his chest. "You're a bully."

" _You're_ the bully!" Roxanne says, even though her heart is beating much too hard; she can feel the pulse of it in the palms of her hands. "We want to go sit down; let us by."

" _You_ wouldn't let _Lisa_ sit down," Wayne says sanctimoniously, as though he hasn't spend the last few weeks being awful Lisa himself.

"Yeah!" Lisa says, "they were mean to me!"

"They're bad," Wayne says.

There's a murmur of agreement from the crowd, and then everyone chimes in.

"Thinks he's smarter than everybody else—" says Derick.

"—acts like she's better than us—" says Miranda.

"—doesn't even know how to say words right—" says Annie.

"—thinks his fish can talk—"

"Look!" Lisa says, pointing at Roxanne's wrist. "I told you it was contagious; I told you!"

Roxanne looks down and sees the blue paint, the marks of Syx's fingers around her wrist. They're just visible beyond the slightly-too-short sleeves of her sweatshirt.

"It's just paint," she snaps. "Don't be stupid."

But everyone is shouting now and nobody is listening to her.

"—blue skin—"

"—'alien disease', he said, you all heard him admit it!"

"—freaks—"

"—contagious—"

"—go back to your own planet!"

"—turning her skin blue—"

"—shouldn't be allowed around real people—"

"—ugly blue thing—"

"Stop it!" Roxanne yells. Syx is clutching Minion's sphere in a viselike grip; they both look terrified. "Stop it right now!"

She doesn't see who it is that pushes her, but somebody does.

Roxanne stumbles, letting go of Syx.

Someone pulls the hood of her sweatshirt up and over her her head, and yanks on the drawstrings as far as they'll go, forcing the hood over her eyes, over her nose and mouth, over most of her face—she can't see; the cloth is in the way; she can't breathe; they've knotted the drawstrings and—she's being pushed again, first one way then another, and they're all around her and they're shouting and—this can't be happening, it can't be; they were walking towards the jungle gym just a moment ago, just a moment ago things were normal, and she should be doing something, she should be stopping this, she should be able to make this not be happening, but she's frozen, can't seem to force her body to fight back, to—

Syx screams.

Roxanne kicks out reflexively, catching someone in the ankle; she hears them yelp in pain. She brings her hands up and strikes out blindly, getting someone in the shoulder and someone in the face, and then she is scrabbling at the knots in the drawstrings of her hood. But they're too tightly tied and the strings are tangled, so she just pulls the whole thing off over her head.

In her t-shirt now, she turns in the direction of Syx's voice. Sam S. tries to grab her, so she elbows him in the stomach.

Syx is a few feet away from her. He's on the ground, flat on his back. Wayne is standing above him, one foot planted on Syx's chest, pinning him down. Syx's face is bloody; his nose is bleeding, and he's screaming at Wayne through the blood on his teeth. Roxanne only recognizes about half of the words that he's shouting; some of them seem to be in another language. He twists frantically, trying to get away, clawing at Wayne's leg.

Wayne, unperturbed, presses his foot down a little harder on Syx's chest, and Syx's voice takes on a gasping, pained quality, but he doesn't stop shouting or struggling to get up because—

—Wayne has Minion's sphere.

He's holding it aloft; and Minion, inside it, is upside down, spinning round and round inside the swirling water—has Wayne been shaking the ball? Fish die if you do that oh god and Minion isn't moving on his own, he's just spinning with the water and there's a plume of blood unfurling in the water from Minion's side—

"Minion!" Roxanne screams and lunges for Wayne.

Nobody tries to stop her; the other kids have backed away from Wayne and Syx; most of the ones nearest the Syx are already sporting injuries and they don't seem eager to sustain more. Wayne, hearing her shout, turns, startled. The move throws him off balance enough that Syx is able, with a violent motion, to wrench himself from underneath Wayne's foot. Wayne, knocked even further off balance, stumbles, and Syx launches himself at Wayne, who drops Minion's ball. Roxanne dives for it, but doesn't make it in time.

Minion's sphere bounces, awfully, sickeningly, and Roxanne gives a smothered noise of horror and throws herself onto her knees, grabbing it, stopping its bouncing, cradling it in her lap and the water is still spinning and Minion is still upside down, the water turning pinkish now—

Wayne yanks Syx off of himself and throws him to the ground. Syx is bruised and bleeding; Wayne doesn't have a scratch on him, but his hair is mussed and Syx has ripped the gold stars off his shirt and left bloody handprints in their place and Wayne looks enraged.

"You're crazy!" he yells, and then says, "stay down!" because Syx is struggling to his feet, clearly intending to throw himself back into the fight.

Wayne shoves him hard and he falls again.

"I said _stay_ _down!_ You _lose_! That means you _stay_ _down_ , you blue-skinned freak of nature!"

" _Fuck_ _you!_ " Syx shouts, dragging himself up again, and Roxanne thinks hysterically that she's never heard anyone but an adult use that particular word before, and Syx is bleeding and Minion isn't moving, he isn't moving— " _Fuck_ _you_ and the escape pod you rode in on, you _tek'sha'nekha lev'arethi_ —"

Wayne punches him and Syx falls again. Syx laughs, pained and crazed, and spits blood at Wayne's feet. Wayne's eyes flare red and a beam of light sears its way across Syx's shoulder. Syx cries out in pain and Roxanne screams, looking around for something to throw at Wayne and—

 _"What on earth is going on?"_ Miss Simmons screeches. Everyone freezes and looks over at their teacher, who is wearing a pink cardigan and the most honest expression Roxanne has ever seen on her; she looks absolutely horrified.

For a moment there is silence, and then—

"Syx attacked us," Wayne says uncertainly.

Roxanne gapes at him, open-mouthed.

"…attacked you," Miss Simmons says slowly, looking at Wayne. Her eyes flicker to Syx, lying on the ground clutching his burned shoulder. She looks around the crowd of schoolchildren. "He attacked you?" she asks them.

They shuffle their feet, glance away from her gaze and—

One by one, they all nod their heads.

"Of course," Miss Simmons says, almost to herself. "Much better that—that must have been it."

"He attacked us," Wayne says earnestly, more confident now. "I had to protect everyone."

"You are a _liar_ ," Roxanne says loudly, voice shaking with rage and shock and fear. "You're the ones who attacked us! We were walking, we were just walking, and he—"

"I had to stop him from hurting the others," Wayne says over top of Roxanne. He glances sidelong at her. "And then Roxanne started hitting people," he adds.

Roxanne opens her mouth to deny it, but the others are already chiming in, telling Miss Simmons how Roxanne kicked them, how she punched them, and Miss Simmons is nodding along as though every word they're saying makes perfect sense, and—

Roxanne looks down at Minion, floating belly-up in the pinkish water of his ball, and Miss Simmons and Wayne and all the rest of them just sort of fade into insignificance.

"Minion," she whispers. Minion doesn't move. "Syx," she says, "Syx, Minion isn't moving; he isn't moving."

She looks up, tears blurring her vision. Syx is beside her now, reaching out for Minion's sphere, fingers leaving crimson smudges on the glass.

"He's okay," Syx says rapidly. "He's okay, he's—he has to be okay; Minion likes to pretend; it's his—favorite game to—Minion, Minion, tell me you're okay!"

In his ball, Minion stirs sluggishly. Roxanne gives a gasping sob of relief—so does Syx—and Minion turns himself slowly upright.

"Minion," Syx says, grinning through tears and blood. "I knew you were okay."

Minion gives him a look so patently disbelieving that Roxanne has to laugh, startled and teary around the edges. Minion sends a glance her way that is half smile, half wince, and then winks at her.

Syx laughs, hugging Minion's sphere tightly. Roxanne wraps her arms around both of them, and they cling together as, above them, Miss Simmons says _unacceptable_ and _violence_ and _expelled_ and _permanent_ _records_ and ordinarily that would seem important to Roxanne, maybe, but right now the sound of her own relieved heartbeat is too loud in her ears for her to pay much attention.

"We're okay," Syx whispers. "It's okay. We're going to be okay."

* * *

Miss Simmons makes them clean themselves up at the sink with soap and water and a bottle of stinging antiseptic. Syx is in worse shape than Roxanne, who just has skinned knees from when she threw herself down to catch Minion's ball. Roxanne asks Syx if there's a way to put antiseptic on Minion, or if they should drop it in the sphere or something, but he tells her that the water has natural cleansing properties.

"—actually a unique chemical composition which—"

"Stop _talking_ ," says Wayne, who Miss Simmons put in charge of watching them while she calls Roxanne's parents and the Warden of the prison. "You're not allowed to talk."

Syx stops talking.

He tilts his head back until his nose stops bleeding and pulls the collar of his shirt aside so that Roxanne can put a bandaid over the burn on his shoulder and they wash the blood off of Syx's hands and Minion's ball.

Some of the blue paint of Syx's handprint comes off in the sink when Roxanne washes her hands, but she deliberately avoids scrubbing it off all the way. She isn't sure why, but it seems—important, somehow, to leave it.

Seeing that they've finished patching themselves up, Wayne grabs their collars and flies them over to the Bad Corner. Wayne's never picked Roxanne up before, like he always does Syx; it's sort of terrifying and rather painful, the collar of her shirt digging into her throat, cutting off her air. Wayne drops them and hovers in the air in front of them for a moment, looking smug. He glances at Minion, and for a moment, Roxanne thinks he's going to try to take the sphere away from Syx.

"Don't even think about it," Syx snarls, looking ready to throw himself at Wayne again.

Wayne's eyes go back to Syx, and for a moment he looks—uncertain, almost guilty. But then he narrows his eyes and draws up his chest.

"You're never coming back here again, you blue freak!" he says, and shoves Syx so that he's facing the corner. He smirks and looks over at Roxanne, who gazes at him for a long moment with as much disgust in her expression as she can muster. Again, Wayne's expression flickers into guilt and then hardens back into self-righteousness. Roxanne gives him a look of utter disappointment and then turns away from him, so that she, too, is facing the corner.

Behind her, she can hear Wayne blow a raspberry, and then he flies away to rejoin the rest of the group.

Miss Simmons is still out of the room; everyone is talking and laughing.

"We won't be bothered by them anymore," Wayne says loudly, and everybody cheers. "They're getting expelled."

"Bye-bye, you blue freak!" Annie sing-songs.

"Losers!"

"Have fun being expelled, Smurfette!" Lisa calls, and everyone laughs.

Roxanne, in the Bad Corner, looks down at the blue marks on her wrist.

She is—having some trouble breathing, actually. It feels like she's suffocating, like she's trapped in her own hood again, like she's being held by her collar once more, and her heart is fluttering wildly in her chest.

 _Expelled_.

She's getting _expelled_. That goes on your _permanent_ _record_.

What are her parents going to say? What is she going to do? She's getting thrown out of school; she'll probably never get a job; when she grows up, everyone will look at her record and nobody will want to hire her, and she'll end up as some sort of criminal and—

A vision appears in Roxanne's head: her and Minion and Syx, dressed in black and white striped outfits and little black masks, like robbers in a cartoon, holding up a bank with that dehydration gun Syx showed her last month.

Roxanne shakes her head. That's irrational, she tells herself; no doubt she'll be able to get a job at, at, at _McDonalds_ or something, and anyway, prisoners don't dress in black and white anymore; they dress in orange jumpsuits, obviously, since Syx wears one every day, and why would he bother wearing a mask to rob a bank; it's not as though there are any other blue people running around the city and oh, god, this isn't helping—

She looks over at Syx, who's gazing into the open door of the supply cabinet with an odd expression on his face.

"What are you thinking?" she whispers, wanting him to turn and look at her, wanting him to tell her we're _going to be okay_ again.

But he keeps staring into the supply cabinet with that strange expression.

"I'm thinking," he says slowly, "that there's enough stuff in this cabinet to make a paint bomb that'll turn everybody in this classroom blue." He strokes his fingers over Minion's bowl and looks over at Roxanne. "What are you thinking?" he asks.

Roxanne looks at him, and the 'skin-colored' bandage against his blue shoulder, showing beneath the hole that Wayne burned in his jumpsuit. She looks down at her wrist, marked with blue, and then she looks up into his face again. She looks at his blue skin, at the alien shape of his head and the inhuman color of his eyes.

She looks at his expression.

She takes a breath.

"I'm thinking we should build that paint bomb," she says.


	7. Chapter 7

"All right," Syx says in a low, rapid voice, under cover of Wayne leading everyone in an off-key rendition of 'row row row your boat' (they're trying to do it in a round—it's really terrible). "You're going to want to pour out a line of baking soda onto the construction paper, and then roll the paper up into a tight tube—Minion, is anyone looking at us?"

Minion, in his sphere on the floor, facing back into the classroom, moves his body side to side in an approximation of a head shake.

"Good; keep looking, Minion—so you roll up the paper and then you fold over the edges so it's sort of sealed. We'll need three of those. I'll mix the paint and the vinegar." He unscrews the top of the mold cleaner and sighs. "I'll have to empty this, I suppose," he says in a disappointed way.

"Is that bad?" Roxanne whispers, rolling the paper rapidly.

"Well, if I kept it," Syx says, pouring the mold cleaner out onto the classroom floor, soaking the carpet, "the bleach in it would mix with the vinegar and produce chlorine gas. Lots of smoke–which would, of course, be a nice addition to the paint bomb!"

"What are you getting rid of it for, then?" Roxanne asks, folding the edges of the first paper tube up. "Keep it; I want to see the smoke!"

"I know, right?" Syx says. "Unfortunately, though, chlorine gas is toxic. To humans. Minion and I would be fine, but—" he glances at Roxanne, then looks away again, "—yes, definitely not worth the risk. Can you hand me the paint?"

Roxanne reaches into the cabinet and pulls out the big jug of blue paint. Behind it and the other paints, shoved to the back of the cabinet, is a large red fire extinguisher. Syx, reaching to take the paint from Roxanne, looks up and sees the extinguisher. His eyes light up.

"Oh, _yes_ ," he says, setting aside the now-empty drain cleaner bottle and pulling out the fire extinguisher. " _Please_ be—" there's a thick layer of dust on the extinguisher. He swipes his hand across the metal body, wiping the dust away from the label, looks down at it. " _Excellent_."

"What?" Roxanne whispers.

"Okay, look," he says, tapping the label. "You remember what this is?"

Roxanne looks at the label. **CO2**. She frowns, trying to recall, then—

"Oh! It's a—a chemical symbol, right?"

"Exactly, yes!" Syx points at the **C**. "Carbon atom. Covalently bonded with—" He points at the **O2**. "Two oxygen atoms. Which makes it?"

Roxanne tilts her head, remembering.

"Carbon dioxide?"

"Correct! And! Fun fact about carbon dioxide," Syx says in an excited whisper, "when the liquid—" he gestures to the fire extinguisher, "—is expelled under great pressure, like when you turn on the extinguisher, the expansion of the gas cools it enough to turn it into carbon dioxide's solid form: dry ice! We're going to need a cloth bag of some sort to collect it. It's extremely cold; you'll need to make sure not to touch it because it can cause frostbite in seconds. Maybe we should—yes, I'll handle the bag; you can operate the extinguisher."

"What are we going to do with this dry ice?" Roxanne asks, gamely looking around for anything they can use for a bag.

"Dry ice sublimes when added to room-temperature liquids!"

"Sublimes?"

"Rapidly turns from solid to gas without going back to liquid first!" Syx smirks sidelong at Roxanne. "Still want to see some smoke with the paint bomb?"

Roxanne grins back at him.

"We can use the hood of my sweatshirt as a bag," she says.

"Ah! Yes, good idea! All right, lets make the paint bomb first. We won't have much time after we start using the fire extinguisher; they're bound to notice the sound of it."

He begins pouring the paint into the empty mold cleaner bottle, then adds vinegar. He caps it, and gives it a brief, vigorous shake, then uncaps it again. He pours the rest of the paint into the vinegar bottle, shakes that, and then pours some of the mixture into the empty paint bottle. Roxanne, finished with the last two construction paper and baking soda tubes, helps him to tape the three bottles together.

"We'll need a separate container for the dry ice mixture," Syx says, pulling a bucket from the cabinet. "And some more liquid." He unearths a large jug of apple juice from the depths of the shelves.

"We can't just add the dry ice to the paint bomb?"

"Well, we could," Syx admits. "It would actually make the whole thing more, you know—" he unscrews the cap from he jug of apple juice and begins pouring it into the bucket, "—explod-y. But. It might be a little too explod-y? Lots of shrapnel, dangerously loud. We're already going to be using carbon dioxide gas for the smoke, which makes it hard to breathe; we don't want to hurt anybody. Just make them blue."

"And scare them," Roxanne adds. She finds she's looking forward to the scaring part. They deserve to be scared.

She pulls off her sweatshirt and hands it to Syx.

"And scare them," Syx agrees."Minion, are we still clear?"

Minion bobs in confirmation.

"Minion," Roxanne says, thinking of something suddenly, "could you roll over to the other side of the room without anybody seeing you and cause a distraction?" She looks at Syx. "How much time will we need?"

Syx tips his head thoughtfully.

"About forty-five seconds if you handle the paint bomb and I deal with the dry ice. Thirty seconds to discharge the extinguisher; fifteen seconds to throw the paint bomb and finish the dry ice smoke bucket. We'll go ahead and put the baking soda tubes in the paint bomb now; the chemical reaction will take a minute or so to build up enough force to explode. Forty-five second distraction in exactly one minute, Minion?"

Minion, already rolling away, smirks at them over one fin.

"Baking soda tubes," Syx says, turning to Roxanne, who is already ready with them.

She sticks them into the bottles; she can hear a fizzing sound starting. Syx caps each bottle, then picks up the whole bomb and gives it a shake. Syx puts down the bomb and pushes the extinguisher into Roxanne's arms.

"Three, two, one," he says under his breath. "Pull the pin!"

Roxanne pulls the plastic pin from the handle of the extinguisher.

A terrifying screeching noise rends the air. Roxanne jumps; Minion, she realizes, screaming from beneath a desk on the other side of the room.

"Squeeze the trigger!" Syx says, holding the hood of the sweatshirt over the nozzle.

Roxanne obeys; the extinguisher begins to spray.

"—eleven, twelve, thirteen—" Syx is counting the seconds.

Roxanne can hear a ruckus behind her; Minion still screaming, several of the kids shouting, the sound desks being overturned. She wants to look, but Syx said dry ice is dangerous and she doesn't want to get distracted and accidentally spray him—

"—twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty! Drop it!"

Roxanne throws the extinguisher aside. She sees a bunch of white powder, almost like snow, collected in the hood of her sweatshirt, but she can't stop to really examine it because she's turning away and picking up the paint bomb.

The bottles are so distended that they're actually hard to the touch, but Roxanne, turning to the classroom, gives the bomb one last shake for good measure.

Wayne overturns another desk; Minion's beneath it. Wayne lunges for him.

Syx, bucket in one hand, improvised sweatshirt bag in the other, leaps over a desk and lands in the center of the room, then drops the bucket, drops the sweatshirt full of dry ice into the bucket, and ducks under Wayne's arm, reaching out for Minion.

Smoke is pouring over the top of the bucket now; the children and Miss Simmons are shrieking, pointing at the bubbling, smoking bucket. Wayne grabs Syx's collar, goes for Minion.

"Hey, Wayne!" Roxanne screams. "Catch!"

And she throws the paint bomb at him.

Wayne lets go of Syx's collar and turns in surprise, hands going out reflexively.

He catches the paint bomb.

Syx scoops up Minion and races back over to the cabinet, pushing Roxanne behind the door of it and—

The bomb explodes in Wayne's hands.

Roxanne, shielded from the blast by Syx's body and the cabinet door, gasps, and then cackles in delight, shocking herself.

It's _glorious_.

Blue paint is _everywhere_. The walls, the floor, the ceiling. Miss Simmons and the other students, screaming and flapping their arms in an attempt to dissipate the fog, are liberally splattered with it. Sam S. is shouting that his new shoes are ruined. Annie is wailing in terrified outrage.

Wayne, still hovering in place, is covered from head to toe in blue paint. And the expression on his face: utter horror, utter shock—it's so _funny_ and Roxanne cannot seem to stop herself from laughing.

Syx, head turned to look over his shoulder, begins to laugh, too. He looks back at her, and something in his expression strikes Roxanne as unbelievably hilarious, so she laughs even harder, and Syx evidently sees the same thing in her face, because he's laughing harder, too. The two of them clutch at each other and they laugh and they laugh and they laugh.

And that's how Roxanne's parents and the Warden from Syx's prison find them all when they arrive at the school: the room in a thick fog, Miss Simmons screeching, the children screaming, Wayne frozen in outrage, everything covered in blue paint, and Roxanne and Syx holding each other up and laughing like maniacs with Minion in the Bad Corner.

* * *

"—cannot tolerate violence of any sort in this educational setting," Miss Simmons says shrilly, looking at Roxanne's parents. They look back at her, clearly dumbfounded. The Warden, seated next to Syx, merely looks resigned.

He's looked resigned the entire time he's been here, actually. He'd taken one look around the pandemonium of the class room, had sighed, and put his hand on Syx's shoulder, leading him to the door, clearly intending to take Syx back to the prison with him on the prison bus without protest. But Roxanne's father, seeing him, had dragged him into his own argument with Miss Simmons—

"I'm a perfectly reasonable man! The Warden here can tell you that, and he doesn't even like me. Isn't that right, Warden?"

—And so now all of them: Roxanne, her parents, Syx, and the Warden, are sitting in the classroom with Miss Simmons, the other children having been sent home on account of the sheer impossibility of cleaning up the mess that day.

"Not only," Miss Simmons continues, "have your children been involved in an attack on several other students, the two of them actually built and detonated an incendiary device in this classroom!" She pushes a strand of still blue hair behind a blue-splattered ear. "In such circumstances as these, I'm sure you'll understand that expulsion is the only option! Both children's scholarships with be revoked, and—"

"Wait a sec, wait," says Roxanne's dad, "Come on now, don't you think 'incendiary device' is a little too strong a term for a bunch of paint getting thrown around?"

"The damage," Miss Simmons says icily, "will be quite expensive to repair."

Roxanne kicks her heels against the legs of her chair. She hopes the damage is impossible to repair. She would hope that Miss Simmons might be stuck being blue forever, except the color blue had never done anything to deserve being stuck with Miss Simmons.

"—don't seem to understand that your daughter has been caught setting off a bomb!" Miss Simmons says, voice raised.

Roxanne feels her skin go hot all over, and then cold.

She set off a bomb, didn't she? She set off a bomb. People get arrested for that kind of thing, oh god, she really is going to have to take to a life of robbing banks with Syx and Minion because even McDonalds isn't going to hire her after they find out that she set off a bomb and the worst part of it is, the worst part is, she can't find it in herself to be sorry (the bang of the bomb going off, the splatter of blue paint), and what does that say about her?

She can't breathe—

(trapped in her own hood, dangling in the air with Wayne's grip on her collar cutting off her breathing)

Vaguely, she notices Syx glance at her with a concerned expression on his face, but it's sort of hard to think about that, impossible, really, to think about anything but the fact that she can't seem to get enough air—

Syx places Minion's ball on Roxanne's lap. Instinctively, she takes hold of it, one of her hands settling atop Syx's on the curve of the sphere.

(electron shared, bonded, balanced, a molecule, a unit)

Roxanne breathes.

She breathes.

She focuses.

"—blow this out of proportion!" her dad is saying.

"Be that as it may," Miss Simmons interrupts Roxanne's dad's attempts to convince her that the paint bomb was just a 'harmless prank, kids, you know, they just get carried away sometimes'. "Be that as it may, Mr. Ritchi, fighting in school—"

"Oh, fighting," Roxanne's dad turns his charming smile on again and waves a deprecating hand. "I'm sure your school charter doesn't proscribe immediate expulsion for a first offense like that!"

"The charter does not specifically mandate expulsion upon a first offense, no," Miss Simmons admits, and then gives Roxanne's father a sweet smile with a sting in it. "But this is hardly your daughter's first time acting out here at school."

Roxanne's mother frowns.

"You mean that note you sent home with her?" she asks. "But that was months ago!"

"I was not merely referring to that instance," Miss Simmons says, "although it did mark the beginning of a disappointing lack of respect in your daughter's attitude towards myself. What I find most disturbing, however, is the general trend of antisocial behavior exhibited by both of these children." She gives Roxanne's parents an earnest look, only briefly glancing at the Warden, who just sighs heavily, as though it's what he's expected all along. "The two of them deliberately and habitually isolate themselves from their classmates; I have been forced to reprimand them for bullying their fellow students, and they are strangely reluctant to join in any group activities, even going so far as to refuse to participate in gym class!"

"Refuses to participate in gym class?" Roxanne's dad asks, in a tone of utter disbelief. (The Warden frowns at Miss Simmons, as though she has, for the first time, said something unexpected.) "Why would she refuse to—"

"Why weren't we told any of this before?" Roxanne's mother asks incredulously. "If you were having problems like this with Roxanne, then why on earth weren't her parents notified?"

An expression of irritation, quickly suppressed, comes over Miss Simmons' face for a moment. Clearly, this conference is not going exactly as she would like.

"Forgive me, but I believe," Miss Simmons says, deftly changing tactics, "that the two of you are recently divorced?"

"Yes," says Roxanne's mother, "but I don't see what that has to do with—"

"Divorce can be difficult for children to deal with, emotionally," Miss Simmons says. "Perhaps you might consider taking your daughter to a psychologist."

Roxanne's parents startle back as though she has thrown cold water in their faces.

"Antisocial behavior," continues Miss Simmons, taking the opportunity to press her advantage, "can be a warning sigh of all sorts of other psychological—"

"Now hold on one second!" Roxanne's dad says. "You're telling me that Roxanne is showing signs of 'antisocial behavior'; you've complained that she doesn't associate with any of the other children, but clearly—" he gestures at Syx and Roxanne, "—clearly she's got at least one friend! I mean, you might not like the results of the friendship—" he flaps a hand at the paint-splattered classroom, "—but you can't argue that it's not there."

"You misunderstand me, Mr. Ritchi," Miss Simmons says, smiling so sweetly that Roxanne's teeth hurt. "I certainly do not deny the close association between the two of them." She looks at the Warden, a swift, calculating glance; he's looking stoically off into the middle distance. This appears to afford her some satisfaction. She looks back at Roxanne's dad and her smile is back in place. "But, in my opinion, it is a friendship only on your daughter's side."

Roxanne gasps; Syx's hand jerks beneath Roxanne's on Minion sphere.

"The…child…," Miss Simmons says with distasteful delicacy, "known as 'Syx' has been a disruptive influence in the classroom since his arrival. Indeed, I am sure that the legal guardian—" she looks at the Warden, "—will attest to this disruptive influence being a well-established behavioral pattern at home."

The Warden winces and then nods heavily.

"Fires have been repeatedly set, school property repeatedly destroyed, my own safety threatened, and now the attack on my students! It is simply not safe to allow this sort of thing to continue! But," Miss Simmons continues, "I have noticed that your daughter's behavior was model until the start of this…unfortunate association. It is my belief that your daughter became involved with this—boy—in a misguided attempt to help it. But in her emotional vulnerability, she has allowed herself to be manipulated and negatively influenced by it instead. Well, I believe that, when the source of the bad influence has been removed, she will once again return to her natural, normal state."

She smiles expectantly at Roxanne's parents, and Roxanne realizes, all at once, what this means.

She's being let off the hook. Syx is getting expelled, but she—she's not. No more bank robbing for her, no more working at McDonalds, everything back to normal.

She looks at her parents, sees the relief showing naked in their faces. She looks over at Syx, whose face is set in a curious, blank resignation.

Roxanne feels a great wave of black rage against the injustice of it all rise up inside of her, sweeping everything else aside, all of her fears and her worries and her doubts, making everything clear and bright and terrible. She fixes her gaze on Miss Simmons, narrows her eyes.

"What do you mean ' _it_ '? Roxanne says.

Miss Simmons blinks at her.

"I beg your pardon?" she asks.

"You," says Roxanne, quite loudly and very clearly, "called Syx ' _it_ '."

Miss Simmons blinks again, smile slipping.

"Don't be silly, dear," she says cloyingly. "Of course I didn't."

"Yes," Roxanne says, "you did. Twice. I _heard_ you."

"Nonsense!"

"Liar," says Roxanne. "You called him 'it'. You thought nobody would notice, but _I_ did. _I_ noticed. _I am always going to notice_."

"I did not call—"

"I think," Roxanne's father says slowly, "that you might have, you know."

Miss Simmons smiles again, all honeysuckle and light.

"I apologize if I misspoke," she says, "but—"

"Do you want to know why _I decided_ we shouldn't participate in gym class?" Roxanne asks loudly, still looking at Miss Simmons. "Do you want to know why we don't play with the other kids?"

"Kiddo—" her dad begins.

"It's because every time we play with them, Wayne hurts us," Roxanne says.

An explosive silence follows.

"Wayne the dodgeball kid?" her father asks.

"Wayne Scott?" the Warden asks.

"What do you mean," Roxanne's mother says, slow and dangerous, " _hurts_ you?"

Roxanne looks at Syx. He meets her eyes, and then gives her a tiny nod.

She takes a deep breath and tells them.

She tells them _everything_.

* * *

"—throws too hard and it hurts and—"

"Now, really," Miss Simmons says, smile cracking around the edges, "during physical activity, there's bound to be—"

"Show them your shoulder, Syx," Roxanne says, watching the expression on Miss Simmons' face fracture.

Syx pulls his collar aside and peels the bandage off his shoulder.

Roxanne's mother, her father, and the Warden all inhale sharply.

"How—" Roxanne's mother begins. "That looks like a _burn_."

* * *

"—just walking to the jungle gym and—" Roxanne swallows convulsively, tears starting in her eyes, "—they were all around us. And they said—they said—"

"They said," Syx says, "that I wasn't a real person. They said that _what I was_ must be contagious because—" Roxanne pauses in wiping away her tears to hold up her wrist, the one marked with blue paint. "—yes, that, because of that. Which is—is paint, by the way. If you didn't—I'm an alien, it's—not contagious, you don't have to worry—"

Roxanne's mother presses a hand to her mouth.

"Oh, my god, the paint bomb," Roxanne's father says, in a tone of dawning realization. "It was _blue_. That's why it was _blue_."

* * *

"—and then he threw me down again and told me to stay down this time and called me a freak of nature, so I, well. Sort of spat blood at him and told him to go fuck himself." He glances at the Warden. "Sorry," he adds.

"Jesus, kid," the Warden says blankly.

* * *

"—told us we were expelled and made us stand in the Bad Corner so we made the paint bomb. And honestly!" Syx adds to Miss Simmons, "What could you have been thinking, sending me to Quiet Time every day when the Bad Corner faces into an open _supply cabinet full of chemicals?_ The things I could have been doing all this time! The experiments! The explosions! But I haven't! You have no concept-ion how much willpower that took!"

Roxanne makes a mental note to explain how to pronounce 'conception' later, since now isn't exactly the time.

There are several seconds of silence, and then—

"—the hell kind of a school is this? I've never—"

"—completely unfit to deal with children—"

"—never heard of anything so—"

"—will take this up with the board of trustees!"

"'Lil Gifted School," Miss Simmons says snippily, "does not have a board of trustees. We are very private. Very exclusive."

Roxanne's dad narrows his eyes.

"Who hired you, then?" he asks, in a tone that makes it clear he thinks whoever it was is an idiot.

"Our backers prefer to remain anonymous," says Miss Simmons.

"'Prefer to remain anonymous'?" Roxanne's father repeats incredulously. "What kind of run-around bull—"

"Fine," Roxanne's mother cuts him off, sitting up straight and clutching her purse as though she may at any moment wield it with deadly intent. "You can keep your secret backers; the people I want to talk to are this Wayne Scott's parents. When will they be joining us here?"

"Yes," the Warden says, "Why aren't Wayne Scott's parents in here?"

"As the authority in this classroom," Miss Simmons says, looking flustered and uncomfortable, "I see no reason to involve Mr. and Mrs. Scott in this matter of disciplinary action—"

"No reason to involve them? Their kid has been systematically bullying ours for months—"

"—and don't think that I didn't notice that it's the two scholarship children who have been singled out here—"

"—classism as well as racism—"

"—lawsuit, and let me tell you—"

Roxanne, Syx, and Minion share a a look of sheer and utter satisfaction.

* * *

Miss Simmons is in hysterics by the time they leave. It's _excellent_.

Somehow all of them wind up taking the prison bus to a diner so the adults can continue their furious discussion. It's a weird meal. Roxanne's parents are both shouting, but for once they're in complete agreement, and the Warden and Roxanne's dad appear to have progressed from a cool professional dislike to bonding over their mutual outrage to deciding they should go out for drinks sometime after work.

Syx, and Roxanne, squeezed into one corner of the booth, with Minion in between them, take advantage of the adults' distraction to order waffles and sodas and milkshakes (Roxanne gets chocolate; Syx asks for half chocolate, half strawberry, and then proceeds to empty most of the table's sugar packets into his shake. Roxanne looks on, horrified and impressed.)

By the time their waffles arrive, he's sketching out explanatory diagrams of the self-cleaning water molecules in Minion's sphere for Roxanne on a napkin with maple syrup.

"—osmosis, see, except—" He looks up at Roxanne and sees her grinning at him. "What?" he asks.

(On the other side of the table, the adults are still talking loud enough that the people in the diner are staring at them instead of Syx.)

"Nothing," Roxanne says, still smiling so hard her face is starting to hurt. "Nothing. I'm just—I'm really happy that we're friends, is all."

(Later, Mr. Scott's personal lawyer will call both Roxanne's parents and the Warden and offer to pay for Roxanne and Syx's tuition to any private school of their choice in exchange for them not pressing charges, and later Roxanne's parents will get into a screaming match— _let our daughter be a normal kid, Steve; we tried it your way, with the fancy private school once and look where it got us—_ and later Syx and Roxanne will have to argue the Warden into letting Syx go to the public school with Roxanne — _no, I do not wish to skip any grades, either, Warden; yes, I am sure—_ and later things will be complicated and scary and maybe not entirely safe, but right now—

Syx smiles like sunlight piercing through dark clouds and presses their shoulders close together. Minion, in his sphere on the table, rolls over to bump against Roxanne's hand.

"I am very happy about that, too," Syx says.

—right now everything is perfect.

* * *

 _This au continues! The next story in the series, entitled Safe If We Stand Close Together: Happy Returns, is now up!_

 _To see the illustrations for Safe If We Stand Close Together (Syx's 'home' watercolor and his oil painting of the ocean), go to the link in my profile._

 _Thank you for reading!_


End file.
